Justice? The rock star who got four years for killing his partner

Singer Bertrand Cantat hit his partner an estimated 19 times in one attack, causing irreversible brain damage that led, a few days later, to her death. You might think that would make him unpopular with his peers. Not so: since killing Marie Trintignant in 2003 - apparently provoked by an affectionate text message she'd received from her ex-husband - sales of Cantat's albums have gone through the roof. Sentenced to eight years in prison, he has been released after serving just four.

We probably shouldn't be surprised by this short sentence - after all, not so long ago, France's crime passionnel defence could have seen him exonerated completely. Surely such a low tariff for killing your partner couldn't be handed down in Britain? Well, yes actually, it could. In 2004, Paul Dalton killed his wife, Tae Hui Kang, invested in an electric saw, chopped her cadaver into nine pieces, and stored them in his fridge. Dalton argued in court that his wife had taunted him with the suggestion of an affair. He was given just two years in prison for manslaughter and an extra three for "preventing a burial".

These tariffs - and, indeed, the increased popularity of Cantat's music - seem to suggest a deep-rooted sympathy for the idea that a man might kill his partner owing to jealousy, or taunting: what women's campaigners sometimes call the "nagging and shagging" defence. Would the judicial system be so lenient to a woman who argued the same though?

It's difficult to tell conclusively, because no statistics are available and the reasons that women generally give in the much rarer cases where they kill their partners tend to centre around their experiences of long-term domestic abuse. And while you might expect this defence to be given more weight than the "she was making eyes at another man" defence, evidence suggests not.

As Sandra McNeill of the campaigning group Justice for Women says, "I've heard men claim in court: 'She was unfaithful, she nagged, she wound me up,' and the truth of this testimony is never even questioned. Whereas women who say: 'I was afraid of him' are asked: 'Where's your proof? Had you gone to the police? Why didn't you just leave him?" I've never heard a man asked in court: 'Why didn't you just leave if you were jealous?' There's an acceptance that a man might kill out of jealousy, because women are still seen as possessions".

So, what does McNeill think the tariff would be if a woman killed her partner out of jealousy? She laughs. "I think they'd put her in Rampton and throw away the key."